A RECOVERING MARKET – OFFSHORE ENERGY OUTLOOK BY KIERAN CLARK
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ince last year’s Offshore Energy issue, there has been a 5 percent increase in planned systems for 2017-2020. This is an improvement compared to last year’s 10 percent drop in planned systems. Oil prices have stabilized since the last major crash, and are continuing to improve — a sign of recovery for the offshore energy industry. Overall, the industry is still working to recover from the massive depression of oil prices since their last peak in 2014. While traditional offshore oil and gas platforms have struggled to find
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their footing again, there is potential growth for fiber systems in the renewables market — specifically offshore wind farms. While demand in this arena is still not at the level of even a muted oil and gas industry, any new opportunities for submarine fiber systems should be welcomed with open arms. Welcome to SubTel Forum’s annual Offshore Energy issue. This month, we’ll take a look at the market for submarine fiber in the world of offshore energy platforms. The data used in this article is ob-
tained from the public domain and is tracked by the ever evolving STF Analytics database, where products like the Almanac, Cable Map, Online Cable Map and Industry Report find their roots.
BY THE NUMBERS
For last year’s Offshore Energy issue, 3 systems were planned to be ready for service here in 2017. There were 4 more systems were planned for 2018, 10 systems planned for 2019 and no systems planned yet for 2020. After a year’s time, these numbers have shuffled